Amiel's Journal

The Journal Intimne of Henri Frederic Amiel

Translated, by Mrs
Humphrey Ward

A.L. Burt Company

Extracts
from a translated version of Henri
Frederic Amiel's "Journal Intime." - Copy Rec'd from mother in Spring
1999.
For some reason the following passages strike a chord or ring
a
bell.---When I discover such a passage it seems to be imperative to
write
them down as soon as I can. Hence this page. -
SLD

July 16,
1848. -
There is but one thing needful
- to posses God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and
soul, all
our external resources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity,
so
many modes of tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to
detach ourselves
from all that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely
only
to what is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, a
usufruct....
To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: there is
my
law, my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come what come
will - even
death. Only be at peace with self, live in the presence of
God, in
communion with Him, and leave the guidance of existence to those
universal
powers against whom thou can do nothing! If death gives me
time, so
much the better. If its summons is near, so much the better
still;
if a half-death overtake me, still so much the better, for so the path
of
success is closed to me only that I may find opening before me the path
of
heroism, of moral greatness, and as it is impossible to be outside God,
the
best is consciously to dwell in Him.

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul
over the flesh - that is to say, over fear: Fear of poverty,
of suffering,
of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is
o serious
piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious
concentration
of courage.

Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality
of a positive world while at the same time detaching us from it.

June
16, 1851. - This evening I walked up and
down on the Point
des Bergues, under a clear, moonless heaven delighting in the freshness
of
the water, streaked with light from the two quays, and glimmering under
the
twinkling stars. Meeting all these different groups of young
people,
families, couples and children, who were returning to their homes, to
their
garrets or their drawing-rooms, singing or talking as they went, I felt
a
movement of sympathy for these passer-by; my eyes and ears became those
of
a poet or a painter; while even one's mere kindly curiosity seems to
bring
with it a joy in living and in seeing others live.

August
15,
1851. - To
know how to be ready, a great
thing, a precious gift, and one that implies calculation, grasp and
decision.
To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for
everything
cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from
the
detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally
considered;
in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business, and
his
life. To know how to be ready, is to know how to start.

It is
astonishing how all of us are generally cumbered
up with the thousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such,
but
which nevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter
the
movement of our wings. It is the lack of order which makes us
slaves;
the confusion of to-day discounts the freedom of tomorrow.

Confusion is the enemy of all comfort, and confusion
is born of procrastination. To know how to be ready we must
be able
to finish. Nothing is done but what is finished.
The things which
we leave dragging behind us will start up again later on before us and
harass
our path. Let each day take thought for what concerns it,
liquidate
its own affairs and respect the day which is to follow, and then we
shall
be always ready. To know how to be ready is at the bottom to
know how
to die.

December
2,
1851. - Let
mystery have its place in you;
do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of
self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready
for
any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the
passing
bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar
for
the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do
not be
too eager to tame it. If you are conscious of something new -
thought
or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being - do not be in a hurry
to
let in light upon it, to look at it. Let the springing germ
have the
protection of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not
break
in upon its darkness; let it take shape and grow, and not a word of
your
happiness to anyone! Sacred work of nature as it is, all
conception
should be enwrapped by the triple veil of modesty, silence and night.

He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains
is taken at his word; he who does not advance, falls back; he who stops
is
overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes
smaller;
he who leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning
of
the end. - It is the terrible symptom which precedes death.
To live,
is to achieve a perpetual triumph. It is to assert one's self
against
destruction, against sickness, against the annulling and dispersion of
one's
physical and moral being. It is to will without ceasing, or
rather
to refresh one's will day by day.

It is not history which teaches conscience to
be honest; it is the conscience which educates history. Fact
is corrupting,
it is we who correct it by the persistence of our ideal. The
soul moralizes
the past in order not to be demoralized by it. Like the
alchemists
of the middle ages, she finds in the crucible of experience only the
gold
that she herself has poured into it.

March 3, 1852. -
Opinion has its value and even its power; to have
it against us is painful when we are among friends, and harmful in the
case
of the outer world. We should neither flatter opinion nor
court it;
but it is better, if we can help it, not to throw it on a false scent.
The
first error is meaningless; the second an imprudence. We
should be
ashamed of the one; we may regret the other. Look to
yourself; you
are much given to this last fault, and it has already done you great
harm.
Be ready to bend your pride; abase yourself even so far as to
show
yourself ready and clever like others. This world of skillful
egotisms
and active ambitions, this wold of men, in which one must deceive by
smiles,
conduct, and silence as much as by actual words, a world revolting to
the
proud and upright soul, it is our business to learn to live in it!
Success
is required in it: succeed. Only force is recognized there:
be strong.
Opinion seeks to impose her law upon all, instead of setting
her at
defiance, it would be better to struggle with her and conquer . . .

April 2, 1852. - What a
lovely walk! Sky clear, sun raising,
all the tints bright, all the outlines sharp, save for the soft and
misty
infinite of the lake. A pinch of white frost, powdered the
fields,
lending a metallic relief to the hedges of green box, and to the whole
landscape,
still without leaves, an air of health and vigor, of youth and
freshness.
"Bathe, O disciple, thy thirsty soul in the dew of dawn!"
says Faust,
to us, and he is right. The morning air breathes a new and
laughing
energy into veins and marrow. If every day is a repetition of
life,
every dawn gives signs as it were a new contract with existence.
At
dawn everything is fresh, light, simple, as it is for children.
At
dawn spiritual truth, like the atmosphere, is more transparent, and our
organs,
like the young leaves, drink in the light more eagerly, breaths in more
ether,
and less of things earthly. If night and the starry sky speak
to the
meditative soul of God, of eternity and the infinite, the dawn is the
time
for projects, for resolutions, for the birth of action.

May 2, 1852. - ...All
seed-sowing is a mysterious thing, whether the
seed fall into earth or into souls. Man is a
husbandman; his
whole work rightly understood is to develop life, to sow it everywhere.
Such is the mission of humanity, and of this divine mission
the great
instrument is speech. We forget too often that language is
both a
seed-sowing and a revelation. The influence of a word in
season, is
it not incalculable? What a mystery is speech! But
we are blind
to it, because we are carnal and earthy. We see the stones
and the
trees by the road, the furniture of houses, all that is palpable and
material.
We have no eyes for the invisible phalanxes of ideas which
people the
air and hover incessantly around each one of us.

April
17, 1855.- The
weather is still incredibly brilliant,
warm and clear. The day is full of the singing of birds, the
night
is full of stars, nature has become all kindness, and it is a kindness
clothed
upon with splendor.

For nearly two
hours have I been lost in the
contemplation of this magnificent spectacle. I felt myself in
the temple
of the infinite, in the presence of the worlds, God's guest in this
vast
nature. The stars wandering in the pale ether drew me far
away from
earth. What peace beyond the power of words, what dews of
life eternal,
they shed on the adoring soul! I felt the earth floating like
a boat
in this blue ocean. Such deep and tranquil delight nourishes
the whole
man, it purifies and ennobles. I surrendered myself, I was
all gratitude
and docility.

April 21,
1855.
- I have
been reading a great deal:
ethnography, comparative anatomy, cosmic systems. I have
traversed
the universe from the deepest depths of the empyrean to the peristaltic
movements
of the atoms in the elementary cell. I have felt myself
expanding in
the infinite, and enfranchised in spirit from the bounds of time and
space,
able to trace back the whole boundless creation to a point without
dimensions,
and seeing the vast multitude of suns, of milky ways, of stars, and
nebulae,
all existent in the point.

And on all
sides stretched mysteries, marvels
and prodigies, without limit, without number, and without end.
I felt
the unfathomable thought of which the universe is the symbol live and
burn
within me. I touched, proved, tasted, embraced my nothingness
and my
immensity; I kissed the hem of the garments of God, and gave
Him thanks
for being Spirit and for being life. Such moments are
glimpses of the
divine. They make one conscious of one's immortality.
They bring
home to one that an eternity is not too much for the study of the
thoughts
and works of the eternal; they awaken in us an adoring
ecstasy and
the ardent humility of love.

To
judge is to see clearly, to care for what
is just and therefore to be impartial, more exactly, to be
disinterested,
more exactly still, to be impersonal.

To
do easily what is difficult for others
is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is
the mark
of genius.

Our
duty is to be useful, not according to
our desires but according to our powers.

If
nationality is consent, the state is
compulsion.

Self-interest
is but the survival of the animal
in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.

The
man who insists upon seeing with perfect
clearness before he decides never decides. Accept life, and
you must
accept regret.

Without
passion man is a mere latent force
and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron
before
it can give forth its spark.

We
are never more discontented with others
than when we are discontented with ourselves. The
consciousness of
wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart in its cunning quarrels
with
what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamor within.

The
faculty of intellectual metamorphosis
is the first and indispensable faculty of the critic; without it he is
not
apt at understanding other minds, and ought, therefore, if he love
truth,
to hold his peace. The conscientious critic must first
criticize himself;
what we do not understand we have not the right to judge.

June
14,
1858. -
Sadness and anxiety seem to be
increasing upon me. Like cattle in a burning stable, I cling
to what
consumes me, to the solitary life which does me so much harm.
I let
myself be devoured by inward suffering....

Yesterday, however, I struggled against this fatal
tendency. I went out into the country, and the children's
caresses
restored to me something of serenity and calm. After we had
dined out
of doors all three sang some songs and school hymns, which were
delightful
to listen to. The spring fairy had been scattering flowers
over the
fields with lavish hands; it was a little glimpse of paradise.
It is
true, indeed, that the serpent too was not far off. Yesterday
there
was a robbery close by the house, and death had visited another
neighbor.
Sin and death lurk around every Eden, and sometimes within
it. Hence
the tragic beauty, the melancholy poetry of human destiny.
Flowers,
shade, a fine view, a sunset sky, joy, grace, feeling, abundance and
serenity,
tenderness and song.- here you have the element of beauty: the dangers
of
the present and the treacheries of the future, here is the element of
pathos.
The fashion of this world passeth away. Unless we
have laid hold
upon the eternity, unless we take the religious view of life, these
bright,
fleeting days can only be a subject for terror. Happiness
should be
a prayer - and grief also. Faith in the moral order, in the
protecting
fatherhood of God, appeared to me in all its serious
sweetness.

Every
real need is stilled, and every vice
is stimulated by satisfaction.

Obstinacy
is will asserting itself without
being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a
plausible
motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the
tenacity
of reason or conscience.

It
is not what he has, nor even what he does,
which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.